You are confident that your employees are good at problem solving, this is why you hired them. Your staff may even thrive on finding solutions with limited resources and keeping operations within budget. It is wonderful that you have surrounded yourself with skillful people, but using your bright staff to fix an IT problem may hurt your business in the long run.

We are living in an age where the internet makes information easily accessible and this has improved the way we all live. One way that we have all benefited is by gaining the ability to research any project online and learn how to do it yourself (DIY). This can save you lots of money with house projects, car repair, learning new skills, and much more. Technology is empowering, it can make you feel like the only thing that stands between you and finding a solution is the time it takes to do the research. This is all well and good for learning a new hobby or tiling your bathroom; but in business, time is money and learning takes time.

Perhaps one day we will be able to plug ourselves into The Matrix and moments later say, “Whoa, I know Kung Fu.” It would be great if you could plug in and instantly learn how to fix your PC; but until the day comes when machines drive us underground and harvest energy from our bodies, we are still stuck with the limitations of time to digest this wealth of information before us.

Another factor of education to consider when learning a new skill is how much knowledge someone already has on the subject to begin with. You may be confident that an employee can figure out a fix because they are “good with computers,” but IT support is a complex field that requires great expertise. Simply because an employee is great at installing software on their PC, does not mean they will be good at repairing hardware or catching a security risk. If the problem is way outside of an employee’s skill set, this will mean a lot of time will be lost to troubleshooting and fixing a problem through trial and error. Sometimes an IT issue can be chased around forever if you do not know exactly what to do.

The time it takes for an employee to digest information to learn a new skill is expensive, it will actually cost you more than whatever you are paying them per hour. As a business owner, you are acutely aware that taxes and insurance make employees actually cost you more per hour than what they take home; and if a worker is spending a few hours researching how to handle an IT fix, this will equate to hours that the employee is not generating revenue for your company. When all of these expenses are considered, suddenly the idea of submitting a request to an IT professional to quickly repair your computer seems like a bargain.

When you encounter an IT problem, you can save a lot of time and expense by calling the IT professionals at Michell Consulting Group. We offer all-you-can-eat technical support that will give you the ability to call us at any time and receive remote support at a flat-rate fee. This frees up your staff to fix an IT issue with a single phone call, using budgeted time that is already paid for. By freeing up your staff to not have to wait for approval to authorize a repair, and by providing them a quick fix through remote support, your IT issues will be resolved quickly with minimum downtime. This allows your employees to focus on what’s important, bringing in revenue to your bottom line. Call us at 305-592-5433 to learn more.